


the corners of the evening

by hashire



Series: Kinktober 2018 [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Kissing, Porn with Feelings, Reading Aloud, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hashire/pseuds/hashire
Summary: In which Armin reads to Mikasa, and, later, checks on her.





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been done 20 times over, probably, but it's referenced in the angsty smut and I wanted to write it.

That day, Eren was confined to their room. Carla shooed her out because he was being punished and did not need her sympathy or presence. Mikasa found her way to the patch of grass next to the river where she, Eren, and Armin would look at the sky or read.

He arrived shortly after she did, carrying one of his grandfather’s many books. It wasn’t about the world outside: it was a simple romance novel that Armin had caught his grandfather crying over when he finished reading it.

“I want to know why,” he explained.

“Why do you want to cry?” she asked as he flipped the book open and smoothed out the first page. He blinked and looked at her.

“I don’t,” he said after a long moment. “But my grandfather never cries. I want to see what upset him. I...want to know.” Mikasa nodded but can’t think of anything to say. She didn’t understand. “Do you want me to read it out loud?” 

She hesitated. She enjoyed hearing Armin read aloud, but she didn’t want to cry. Finally, she said, “Yes.”

It was a long book - longer than the ones her mother would read to her, than the ones Carla read to her and Eren - so they weren’t able to finish it that day. Mikasa didn’t find it very interesting. She listened to Armin read anyway, because his voice calmed her. 

“How do you like it?” he asked when the sun got lower in the sky and they both needed to return home. 

“It’s fine,” she said. He nodded and didn’t press. Then they said goodbye and returned to their respective homes.

This ritual continued after Eren’s confinement ended. He was entirely uninterested in the book Armin was reading and instead pored over his favorite tome about the world outside. 

Then came the day when the two main characters kissed. Grisha had taken Eren on a house call and Carla had held Mikasa back, so she had wandered to the grassy knoll and found Armin there, book in hand. He greeted her warmly, holding up the book for her to see.

“I was waiting for you before I started reading,” he said, smiling up at her. She nodded, unsure of what to say, and settled down next to him on the grass. 

She’d taken to following along over his shoulder, and, that day, dropped her chin there for easier viewing. He didn’t comment on it, adjusting the book for her to see. 

The scene was descriptive: the initial touch of the characters’ lips, the embrace the followed, the tightening of their arms around each other, the deepening of it. Armin struggled with turning the page. It seemed to be stuck to the one they just read. 

“What do you think that’s like?” Mikasa asked while he tried the licking-the-thumb trick. It proved to be useless.

“What’s what like?” he responded, distracted by his struggling. 

“Kissing,” she said, sitting up a bit while he wrestles. “Grisha and Carla do it all the time and so did my mom and dad.”

“Yeah,” he said as he slowly separated the two pages, wincing at the soft ripping noise. “So did my mom and dad. And my grandpa and grandma, before she died.”

“It must feel nice,” she mused aloud. The book’s spine cracked as he smoothed the pages out. 

“Yeah,” he repeated, staring down at the book. There was a light red dusting on his cheeks, she noticed. “Would you...like to try?”

“Um,” she fumbled. 

“It’s OK! I, uh…” He ducked his head further, hair partially covering his face. “I was wondering about it too.” 

“Oh. Um. Sure.”

Armin kept his head down for a moment, long enough for Mikasa to question her answer. She opened her mouth to recant. Armin lifted his head to meet her eyes.

“OK.” There was a tense silence after that where neither of them knew what to do. Finally, he leaned forward. Their lips brushed. He withdrew. Mikasa felt warmer then: maybe the sun had gotten hotter. Armin looked ready to say something until - 

“Hey lovebirds!” The shout was followed by hooting and hollering. They both stiffened and turned to find the resident bullies a good distance away from them. They were afraid of Mikasa, of course, but they’d never pass up a chance to go after Armin.

After she chased them away, she returned to his side. He was staring down at the book, fingering one the pages. 

“Thanks,” he said, and, while she wasn’t sure which thing he was referring to, she nodded. She motioned to the book, and he started reading again.


	2. part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night following the discussion in 108. Super spoilers!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I craved some angsty arumika smut so I bent the kinktober scars prompt how I wanted.

Mikasa unwraps the bandage from her wrist. She looks at the mark on the back of it. Through the years it has stayed strong: lines full and untouched by time. She wraps it meticulously, after all. She can't cover everything (the scar on her face prickles as though it knows she's thinking of it), but she can do it for this.

There's a short knock on the door before it opens. Privacy is a luxury that few here have, and she's used to other soldiers barging in without her saying anything. But she knows the knock and knows that Armin will be the one entering the room.

She reflexively covers her wrist with a hand, the arm of her Hizuru garment sliding back down to partially cover it as well. Her mother never explicitly told her to hide it: one of the last things she gave Mikasa (other than her life) was the bandage. The mark was still healing then. After she started living with the Yeagers, she continued to wrap it up, feeling she should keep it a secret. (She did share it with Eren and Armin when they expressed interest it in. It was the only time she revealed it to anyone prior to Kiyomi’s first visit.)

Armin closes the door behind him, turning the knob so the door doesn’t click as it shuts. He looks at the empty bed opposite of where Mikasa sits on hers.

“I wanted to see how you’re doing,” he says, taking careful steps as he walks into the room. Her fingers dig into her wrist as she’s reminded of the emptiness of the room without Sasha.

“I’ll be OK,” she says after a long silence. Armin, after a moment of hesitation, sits on the opposite bed facing her. “Did you mean what you said earlier? About Eren?”

He drops his gaze from hers, looking at where her hand clutches the fabric that covers her knees. “If it’s something we need to do, we have to do it,” he murmurs. It’s quiet enough in the building that she can hear everything, and, even if it weren’t, she’s sure it would sound like a shout in her ears. “But it depends on what he says. We won’t know until we talk to him.”

“I know,” Mikasa says, loosening her fingers and looking at the brand between the gaps. She can’t imagine leaving; still, at some point in the future there might no longer be anything for her in Paradis, but she doesn’t want to go somewhere where she would be worshipped. She wants a normal life. Somehow, she can’t see it happening in Paradis or in Hizuru. “I want to believe in him, but after what happened in Marley…and what Connie told us...” She stops. Armin looks back up into her eyes. He understands. He knows.

“We’ll find out,” he says with conviction, but his expression betrays his thoughts: the anxiety, the uncertainty, the feeling of no longer understanding someone whom you considered your closest friend. Mikasa can only nod, starting to trace the slight indents on her arm.

Armin reaches over to take her right hand in his. He squeezes it. There’s comfort in the cool skin of his hand, smooth from the curse he inherited. She squeezes back, fingers of her other hand still going over the mark.

“We’ll figure this out together,” he says, squeezing again and using his other hand to cover the back of the one he’s holding. “No matter what happens, we’re still in this together.” He wears one of his familiar intense expressions. She doesn’t have the capacity to handle it right now so she looks down at their hands. She shifts her hand so he has to let go of it and moves to press their palms together and lace their fingers. He accepts this and lays his other hand on her wrist, pinky just brushing the edge of the brand.

Mikasa and her mother are the only people who've ever touched the arcs and swoops of the mark, so it's a surprise when a shock jolts down her spine. She ducks her head down further to hide the red creeping onto her face, but it’s a useless attempt: her hair is too short to cover her cheeks. Armin’s thumb strokes the thin skin on the back of her hand, not noticing - or, at least, not acknowledging - her slouching posture. Her sleeve slips as she adjusts her grip, and it, too, sends a shiver through her when grazes the mark.

“Sorry,” she mutters, standing up and almost knocking heads with him. She pulls her hand away with care but then darts across the room to her dresser. The top two drawers are hers, and the bottom two are Sasha’s. The haphazardly folded uniforms and casual dresses remain in them. Mikasa isn’t sure if she should offer them to her family or ask if Connie would like something (or, she thinks, perhaps Nicolo, who went so far out of his way to visit her grave). She opens the second drawer to take out her pajamas.

“Is something wrong?” She’s taken away from her musings and looks over her shoulder to find Armin a few feet away.

“No,” she says, likely too quickly for it not to be suspect. She faces forward again. “I just want to get into my pajamas.” And then, without a thought toward the action (purely out of habit at this point), she unties her belt and lets her clothing slide off her shoulders.

There's a small, almost polite noise behind her, and she freezes. She’s so used to undressing in front of Sasha that she hadn’t spared a thought to doing so. She’d undressed and dressed in front of others during missions, but it was usually the other girls. Armin is an old friend whom she undressed in front of as a child when they were together after the wall fell, but the action of taking off her clothes with only him in the room has a different feel to it.

She could shrug the fabric back over her shoulder and make herself presentable again. There’s something in the air that causes her to pause.

“It’s getting late,” Armin says. “I should probably go.” But he takes a step closer, then another, and another. She can feel his warmth radiating onto her skin as he stands behind her.

“It’s all right,” Mikasa says without planning to. “You can stay here, if you want to.” The sentence also comes unbidden; it’s already out, though, and she can’t take it back. She doesn’t want to take it back.

“I shouldn’t,” he says, breath grazing her bare shoulder. “It’s Sasha’s bed, not mine.”

“I didn’t mean Sasha’s bed,” she whispers, smoothing out a fold in her nightgown. The garment still hangs around her elbows, soft material inching down her arms. This is something she hadn’t considering doing (excluding, perhaps, the late nights when her thoughts stray further than she anticipates), but she wants - needs - him here with her.

“If that’s what you want,” he says, reaching to run his fingers over the skin of her bare upper arm.

She turns. “It is.” He tips his face up to look into her eyes. In the moments when she stared at the nightgown, she figured that this could simply veer in the direction of her changing into her pajamas with her back to him and them crawling into her bed together. When she sees the hazy light shining in his eyes, she knows that things will go in the exact opposite direction.

“Are you sure?” Armin asks, voice low. Mikasa knows that he doesn’t mean simply sharing a bed with her.

“I am,” she responds, letting her arms fall to her sides. The cloth whispers along her forearms and caresses the brand, a warmth imbuing into her blood. It hits the floor without a sound, and she stands there, in front of him in only her underwear. His eyes do not stray from hers. The intensity she finds there makes her feel something she can’t quite identify. She bites her lip.

His hand comes up to cup her cheek, and she presses her face into it. The other - his left - takes her right, fingers curling into her palm and thumb sliding over the brand. She jolts again: of course he realized what caused her to run (not that she ever doubted his ability to catch the smallest details).

Armin rocks onto his toes brush his lips against hers. It’s soft: as soft as the first time it happened, but there’s nothing now to stop them: no hoots, no hollers, no childhood bullies to interrupt. The kiss is hesitant, slow. He’s giving her a chance to back out. Mikasa doesn’t want to back out. Her left hand lands on his shoulder, fingers digging into the material of his pajama shirt when his nail grazes middle of the brand. She angles her head and opens her mouth to nip at his lower lip. She savors the groan that it elicits.

She loosens her grip from shirt to hook her arm over his shoulder and pull him to her. This throws them off balance and she lands on the still open drawers. He laughs a bit into her mouth. He draws back. She licks her lips at the loss. His mouth opens but he pauses at her action.

“Are you OK?” he asks finally, eyes impassioned. She doesn’t look away this time.

“Yeah,” Mikasa says, the breathy quality of her voice surprising her. Armin takes a step back. The room is suddenly so cold. The hand on her wrist tugs her away from the dresser. He walks backward without breaking their gaze. She watches him, entranced by how he moves past Sasha’s bed without as much as a sideways glance. She doesn’t even need to say anything.

When they make it to her bed, he stops and motions for her to lie down. Mikasa licks her lips again and climbs onto the bed, flipping onto her back and watching him. Armin pauses to fully take her in, something he had not done until now. He kneels on the bed and crawls over her. He plants one hand on the pillow next to her head.

“Are you sure?” he asks again, brushing some of her hair back before running his finger along the strap of her bra.

“I am,” she repeats, curling a hand around the back of his neck. She pulls him down to initiate another kiss. She has little experience but finds it easy to flow with him. Perhaps it’s because she’s known him for so long. Perhaps it’s something else. His tongue swipes along her bottom lip and she parts her lips to allow him in. The feeling is foreign but pleasant. She groans when he shifts above her to press a leg between her thighs.

He palms her breast through the thin material of her bra, squeezing and running his fingertips along the skin under the edges of the cup. She presses her shoulders against the bed and arches her back. His hand gets caught between them as she moves to unhook her bra. He withdraws, likely to protest that he wants to do it, but it’s too late: she shrugs the straps off her shoulders and tugs it out from under his hand. It lands somewhere across the room.

Armin looks at her body again. Mikasa wouldn’t mind, but she’s impatient now. His thigh presses against her in a lovely pressure, and he is wearing too many clothes. She starts to unbutton the top, careful not to pop a button off but very nearly doing just that. He covers her hands with his and looks into her eyes.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “we have plenty of time.” The words strike a chord in her and tears start to fill her eyes.

“Do we?” she asks, shaking his hands off but continuing more slowly. Once all of the buttons are undone, he pulls the shirt off and treats it similarly to her bra.

“Hey,” he says again, reaching to brush away the tear that slips out, “don’t think about that now.” She takes a deep breath and nods. He smiles and skims the skin of her abs with just his fingertips, dancing over the ridges as his touch moves higher and higher. She cups his face in both of her hands.

He leans over her when she draws him closer. She presses kisses to his face: his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids when they flutter shut, and finally the smile on his lips. He cups both hands around her breasts, squeezing and drawing a gasp out of her. She runs her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. She lets her hands wander over his chest as he thumbs at her nipples, which harden under his touch.

When her hand finds the waistline of his pants, she pauses. Their lips are still pressed together, moving in gentle caresses. It’s not that she’s afraid or doesn’t want this, but the finality of the action causes a pang deep inside of her.

Armin withdraws, setting his hands on either side of her arms, looking at her like he can read her mind. “We can stop if you’re not comfortable,” he says.

“It’s not that,” Mikasa replies. She shifts, moving her leg out from between his. She hooks her fingers under the top of his pajama pants when he tries to pull back. He waits, watching as she moves to spread her legs so he’s kneeling between them. She gives him a soft smile. “Don’t worry about it.” He covers her hands with his and presses down. The waistband slides over his hips, sliding farther down his thighs before she legs go. He stops his motions until she runs her fingertips over the tent in his underwear. He exhales through his nose and shoves the pants down to his knees.

She bites back a smile when he struggles to kick them away. She wraps her fingers around his hips so she’s not distracting him as much. He smooths the expression of frustration once the pants are off, meeting her eyes once more. They both stop, just staring at each other.

“Hi,” he says, as though he feels the need to fill the silence.

“Hi,” Mikasa responds, and moves to cup him through his underwear. Her touch becomes firmer this time. He makes a delicious noise low in his throat. She presses again, and, again, the noise bubbles out. She curls the fingers of her hand other around the back of his neck and tugs him down to press her lips to his neck. She licks a line on his throat, tasting his skin. When she rubs at a damp spot near the tip of his dick, he gasps and thrusts his hips forward.

Armin leans all of his weight on one hand while the other goes between her legs. The soft touch through her panties makes her moan, startling both of them. He strokes her, the pressure and drag of his fingertips becoming firmer as he seems to find confidence with each gasp and throaty noise.

She tries to wrap her fingers around him in the grip she’s seen when walking in on other soldiers in the middle of similar circumstances. His underwear makes this difficult, so she lets go (to which he responds with a groan, pausing his own touches) and reaches for the waistband.

He sits up again, looking down at her. She looks back, nodding in response to his silent question. He lets out a breath and, like he did with his pants, helps her ease them down. Once they’re out of the way (he kicks them off with more finesse than the pants), he pulls her panties off with a smooth movement. She draws her knees up as he shifts his weight backward to tug them off. He drops them to the floor next to the bed.

Mikasa lowers her feet to the bed, pressing them flat on the firm surface. Armin gazes at her body with an appreciative expression, so she does the same to him. It’s a long moment and somehow not, but it gives her time to fully take him and the surroundings in: the quiet of the building; the moonlight streaming through the window to illuminate half of his face, blue eyes shining brighter in it; the scraping of the tree branches on the window as the wind sways them. The world feels...sharper.

When she holds her arms out for him, he meets her halfway. They smother their moans with each other’s mouths, hands now wandering freely. He fumbles and presses down on her clit too hard, and she somehow grazes him with her fingernails in a manner that he clearly does not find pleasant.

It takes one “please” from her to remove his hand and place it on her knee to widen her legs. She lets go of him when he grabs the pillow from behind her head, stumbling over an explanation of how he thinks it would make things easier to put it under her hips. She lifts herself off the bed without question, helping adjust it underneath her. She notices the flush on his face. She cups it again and runs her thumbs over the warmth of his cheeks. Armin ducks his dead so his bangs cover his eyes, but she can see the smile tugging at his lips.

Mikasa takes one hand away from his face, reaching between her legs where his dick nudges against her. She guides it lower, adjusting her hips before pressing it inside of her, allowing him to inch the rest of the way in without her help.

The world sharpened before but now it starts to warp around her. The feeling of him inside of her in unfamiliar but not bad. Her body sings when he rocks in and out of her with careful movements. One hand remains on his face; the other she puts on his shoulder to dig her fingers into the muscle there. She squeezes her thighs against his hips as he presses his damp forehead to her shoulder, panting against her collarbone.

Everything narrows and nothing matters except for here and now: the thrust of his hips, the still cool touch of his hand on her chest, the hand she slips between them to touch herself. He breathes out an “ah!” into her skin, adjusting his position. Her nails score the skin of his upper back at the feelings coursing through her. When he grabs her wrist she thinks he might be trying to stop her, but then - oh, then - he presses his thumb against the mark.

Time slows - or, at least, it feels like it does - as she crosses her ankles over his back and arches into the thrusts. The slap of skin echoes off the walls. She’s close - so close - to coming and she can sense he is, too. All it takes is the graze of his thumbnail to set her off. He slows as she tightens around him and she opens are mouth to beg him to keep moving the way he had been; he tilts his head up to kiss her and her protest is lost.

He strokes the mark throughout, rocking in and out in a now infuriating pace, as she spasms and moans and claws at him again. She’s painfully sensitive at this point. He pulls out when she shakes off his hand. He moves to thrust against her lower stomach, kissing her neck as she tries to catch her breath.

She lets go of his shoulder to wrap her fingers around him, holding her hand there as he presses his dick into her grip. It’s slick and slides easily against her. He sinks her teeth into her neck, and, when she makes an “ah!” noise, he comes on her stomach. She lets go when he pulls away and stares down at her.

Armin leans on his elbows over her, but his arms shake with the effort of doing so. Mikasa unwraps her legs from his hips to arrange them on the bed. She lies on her back with him on his side, curled against her, her arm under his neck so she can reach to stroke his hair. He settles a hand on her stomach, withdrawing it quickly and making a face. After a moment of confusion, she laughs a little and reaches to grab whatever she can find on the floor. She uses her panties to wipe herself and his hand off.

“OK?” he murmurs against her neck when they settle again.

“OK,” she says, shutting her eyes and smiling when he kisses her cheek.


End file.
